2007-03-02 TGP AMENDMENT - Laserfiche WebLink

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WOODWARD:I might ask you a question about the revisions to that section. I noticed that one of the things that has been stricken is the time limit, that there is no longer a time limit. Is that -? YUEN:Right, youre right to notice that. As a practical matter we were concerned about what happens, you know, what happens if the County Council doesnt vote on something within 120 days, and not to imply that the whole process becomes invalid, which is a debatable point under the current language. So knowing that the County Council may take time to reach an agreement or a consensus on voting the General Plan through, we felt it was better not to have a time limit for them, rather than to have a time limit that might be implied as essentially vetoing or voting down the whole process if they dont come to a vote within 120 days. WOODWARD:Thank you. YUEN:Yes? SIRACUSA:Atthetopofpage3weweretalkingaboutthegeneralintentandsubject matter of the proposed amendments. I would feel a lot more comfortable with this, considering that there are community development plans that are being worked on right now and more to follow for the other districts, if there was an indication in there that changes to the General Plan shall not conflict with community development plans in either substance or intent. Would you comment on that idea, please. YUEN:Well, I think that would be burdening this too much to have -. The plans should not conflict with each other. But you may end up passing an amendment to the General Plan that does actually supercede something in the community development plan. The General Plan is more, if you were to put them in a level of importance, the community development plans have to be consistent with the General Plan. You know, these things are enacted by ordinance; and if the Council wants to make a change in the General Plan that does contradict something in the community development plan which is also enacted by ordinance of the Council, then the Council should be able to do that. So I would not recommend making a change like that. Okay? Going on to interim amendments, this is where the first change thats other than -. Okay, in A, the current language says that the Planning Director is supposed to do a feasibility determination; and thats not really the right description of what the Planning Director does in an interim General Plan amendment. You know, generally, say theres an interim General Plan amendment to change an area from Extensive Agriculture to Low Density Urban with the idea that youre going to do a Residential subdivision, generally ideas like that are feasible. It can be done. The question is whether its a good idea or not, based on overall kinds of planning considerations. So the wording here is simply to change it to, simply that you make a recommendation, not feasibility. Feasibility is not really a good word for what -. Just to give an example of, you know, the kind of thing that we dealt with a minute ago, if we were to do a feasibility study on the proposed rezoning amendment that we had, well, its feasible but it doesnt mean its necessarily a good idea. So then the timing is that the time for the Planning Director to review the County Council initiated General Plan interim amendment is cut from 120 days to 60 days; and this should be enough for the Planning Director to make a recommendation. And this is in line with the 4EXHIBIT B